How To Find Graduate Jobs and Internships on Facebook’s BeKnown

 

BeKnown job search

I believe we’ve all heard about BeKnown by now. It’s a Facebook application, which allows users to connect with their Facebook friends in a professional way. The functionalities are very similar to Linkedin but the interface is much more similar to Facebook, combining aspects from both networks.

The app is powered by Monster.com, one of the largest employment websites in the world. They advert BeKnown as a network that provides users with more convenience, control and connections. It all makes sense, at least in theory.

Increasing your network

Once you install BeKnown one of the first things it asks you to do is to invite your Facebook friends to join your network. I started BeKnown with zero connections. One day after it launched I received two invites from Facebook friends. A couple of days passed and my network did not increase, which made me realise I had to start inviting people. After one day, only one person accepted my invite to join BeKnown. Which makes me wonder, how much potential does this network within a network concept will work?

Comparing with LinkedIn, which currently has more than 150 million users and a good number of monthly visitors, Facebook is still the winner with more than 800 million and very high usage. So it might be that Facebook has more potential? Not sure, since the audience is not exactly the same. Remember, we still believe Linkedin is the most important social network.

Profile

BeKnown imports information about your experience and education from your Facebook profile, that’s how I instantly won two badges. Rookie, which everyone gets once you install BeKnown. And the other was Loyal, which I got because I have a 2+ year experience at one single company. I thought it was a fun and clever use of badges, but not sure how professional you can say that is.

The fact you’re able to add a profile picture for BeKnown only is great. It’s an essential feature that allows you to have the looking and feel of a more professional network.

See examples and skip tasks

BeKnown wants you to be up and running in their network, so it keeps showing you messages when parts of your profile are not complete. I simply loved the way they did it! Linkedin could learn some lessons here. To complete the remaining fields in my CV it shows me a specific task, which I can decide to skip and another task will show up. Very clever!

I also liked how BeKnown shows examples for the different fields in the profile. When you decide to write your summary you can click on “see examples” and it will explain what it expects you to write giving you an actual example. Genius. Very helpful.

Job Search

This feature is not very different from Monster.com does.

But there is one feature I really liked – Jobs for Friends. This shows what jobs match your connections. At first, this doesn’t sound very interesting and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But when you see the reward icon, you get excited. You’re able to make money by recommending your friends. Right now in my network there’s a job matching one of my connections, this specific job would pay me $369 for a recommendation. How cool is that?

The conclusions

It is hard to get connections. You or your friends might not be interested in maintaining a professional relationship, specially through Facebook. Professional networks are not like Facebook networks. It not only about who you know. It’s about who you know and will add value to you, either now or in the future. And let’s be honest, I don’t think 80% of my Facebook friends would.

It is more playful. I don’t say that only because of the badges, even though they are a very different element from other professional networks. It’s about the language and features such as skiping tasks and see examples. I like that, it makes it more fun.

A network within a network won’t work. I don’t think this concept will work. We’ve seen some other apps doing that on Facebook, but most of them were games. Even though BeKnown and Facebook have totally different purposes, I don’t believe someone can maintain two different networks in one single space (with the same friends!). It gets confusing. People quit MySpace to go to Facebook in the US, in Brazil people are quitting Orkut to go to Facebook. I believe you can only maintain two when you have a different and more segmented group of people, like Linkedin is for me.

And how about you, did you have a chance to play around with BeKnown? Please share your thoughts, I’d love to know whether I’m the only one who doesn’t see a long future for this application.

Further reading at: How Generation Y Use Facebook for Professional Networking (Infographic).

Cristina Dresch is part of the social recruiting training team at Link Humans in London.

Laurence Hebberd

Laurence Hebberd is Community Manager for Link Humans in London. He also runs the Link Humans Twitter feed - @LinkHumans.

Filed Under: Facebook, Graduate, Intern, Job Board, Job Search Tagged With: , , , ,

INFOGRAPHIC: What People Search for on UK Job Boards

job boards in the UK

Have you ever wondered what people are searching for on Monster UK? Your sleepless nights are over, with the brand new Monster journey infographic you can see some fascinating trends from what days are the most popular for searches to how many graduate positions are searched for every week in Great Britain.

Some takeaways from the study:

- 17,778 job searches made every hour
- 164 job postings viewed every minute
- 2,126 new job postings per day
- 3 sales jobs searched for every minute
- 3,283 CVs viewed by employers per hour
- 2,671 marketing jobs searched for every day
- 12,870 graduate positions searched for every week
- Tuesday and Wednesday are most popular job hunting days
- 52% of job seekers have a bachelor’s degree

Other revelations include that banking is the preferred career choice for teenagers, almost a third of jobseekers spend time at their current job looking for a new one and that ‘sales’ is the most searched word on the Monster site.

Related: How To Search for Jobs on Facebook (Infographic).

Source: Monster.co.uk

photo by: garryknight

Jorgen Sundberg

The original Undercover Recruiter, after 7 years in tech recruiting Jorgen now runs Link Humans, a social media marketing agency in London.

Filed Under: Infographic, Job Board, Job Search Tagged With: , ,

7 Key Tips to Boost Your Chances of Getting a Job

Getting a job in today’s economy is no easy challenge. You may not be able to land a job even after weeks or months of job search. This is because most of the jobseekers are using specific strategies to stay ahead in the competition. If you don’t want to be left behind in the race, you too need to have an action-plan ready with you. The more time it takes to look for a job, the more frustrated you can become. So, you need to act now!

Given below are seven key tips that you can use to boost your job search and land a job before it’s really too late.

#1. Don’t Look for a Perfect Job

If you ask career experts, they’ll tell you that there’s nothing like a perfect job. You may not always be able to get all you want from a job in a single package, particularly when the going is really tough. Therefore, the first thing that you need to keep in mind while trying to get a new job is ‘let go of perfectionism’. You’ll always have time to find better opportunities when you’ve got a job already.

#2. Gear Up Really Well

Preparation is always the key, whether it’s submitting a resume, applying for a job, attending an interview or meeting with the employer. Make sure all your gears are in good order. Spend adequate time to create an impressive resume. Do remember to tailor your cover letter to the specific requirements of the employer you want to work with.

Take a look at How To Write a Resume – Feel the Employer Pain.

#3. Network Extensively (But not Blindly)

Social or professional networking can bring you amazing results. If you want to boost your chances of landing a job really quickly, you should try to connect with more and more influential people, both offline and online. Attend social and community events where you can get to know new people. Be active on popular social networking websites like Faceboo, Twitter and LinkedIn. In any case, don’t waste your time networking blinding. Always connect with those people who you think can bring you career benefits in some way or the other.

More at Top 10 Networking Books for Your Career Success.

#4. Don’t Let Rejections Discourage You

Getting rejected is just a part of the game. And it’s so easy to get frustrated when you see no results from your job search. Not every employer will want to hire you. Hiring managers will offer you a job only when they are fully convinced of your potential and how you can help their company with your skills. Even if you are rejected in your first few attempts, you need to continue with your job search. If it’s really taking longer than what you expected, you need to review your strategy and modify the action plan.

#5. Focus on Getting Your Foot in the Door First

If you really want to boost your chances of getting a job, you should first try to get your foot in the door. The first break is important. Unless you get your first break in the industry, you can’t build the work experience that you’ll need to negotiate better job or career opportunities.

#6. Also Target Regional Job Websites

Don’t make potential job search mistakes like many others do. While it’s always advisable to submit your resume to the major job boards, it’s also a useful recommendation not to ignore regional job sites. Try to find jobs in your own location by visiting job sites that focus on a specific region.

Have a look at the Riley Guide or Job-Hunt.org for job board directories.

#7. Don’t Ignore Temporary Jobs

Getting a temporary job is always better than sitting unemployed. Since these are really lean times, you shouldn’t completely ignore temporary jobs. Many companies hire candidates for temporarily. If it’s one with a potential employer, you should grab it quickly. Who knows when this temporary job can turn into a full-time job position. Just give your 100 percent to whatever job you take up and try to showcase your most essential and unique skills.

Finally, ensure you’re not making any mistakes by reading the Top 5 Job Search Blunders.

James Tomerson writes regularly on career, education and latest job trends. To read more from him, you can visit Jobdiagnosis.com, which also offers jobseekers a free career aptitude test to choose a career which is in tune with their career, aptitude and skills.

Image credit CEBImagery

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Filed Under: Job Search Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Top 5 Job Search Aggregators for a Smarter Job Hunt

the top 5 job search aggregators

Some swear by them, some say they are a waste of time. Love them or loathe them, job boards is the natural first port of call for most job seekers. They are great for putting your finger on the job market pulse and to get an idea of what is out there.

Too many job boards

The trouble with job boards is that you never know which one to use as new ones keep popping up on a daily basis. The barriers to entry in this industry are very low, as anyone with some technical knowledge can set up a free open-source powered job board and start posting positions tomorrow. This is part of the problem for the job seeker, as you will have to trawl through numerous sites every day and sometimes you have to sign up and upload a resume to apply as well.

Remember when the Internet was new and you were on AltaVista, WebCrawler, Yahoo and whatever new search engine that came out. Then one day you discovered Google and you never looked back…

Enter the job search engines

The good news is that there are meta search job boards that aggregate job postings from other sites. Just like your typical search engines, these sites will compile jobs matching the skill and location that you enter. The results that come up will be pulled from all directions and will be with you in an instant. Traditional job boards such as Monster will charge their customers to post ads, the aggregators can’t do this as they are only linking to the original ad. Instead, they rely on advertising so you will have to put up with some Google Adsense next to your search results.

Benefits of job board aggregators

The main reason for you to use an aggregator is that you will search through all jobs in one go. You will not find as many results from your search anywhere else. The comprehensive search will pull up results from job boards, newspaper’s job sections, company career pages, recruiter sites and more.

The other reason to use a job search engine is that you save lots of time. Instead of hopping through 10 job boards per day, just use your favourite aggregator and rest assured that you have all bases covered. The time you save can be put to good use for the other aspects of your job search.

Warning: lots of results and duplicates

For obvious reasons, the aggregated sites will render long lists of results from your search terms. You will want to be as specific as possible when searching to narrow down the findings. Enter not only your skill but sub-skill, not only your town but actual zip code to begin with to keep results more specific.

The job search engines will also deliver a great deal of duplicate job postings. If a role is posted on three different sites (company, job board and recruiter), you are likely to get all three results from your search. Be aware of this and do not apply for the same job three times as it will not do you any favors.

Here are the best aggregated job boards in order of size:

1. Indeed

Started out back in 2004 and was the trailblazer for all job search engines and is still the largest. Indeed keeps expanding globally and is now available in 19 different country specific versions.

2. SimplyHired

Close runner up to Indeed and definitely the great contender. It looks and feels just like Indeed but SimplyHired has more add-on applications that connects you to social media for easy sharing and research on the jobs you find. Available in 17 countries worldwide.

3. CareerJet

Again a very similar application to Indeed, CareerJet claims to scan over 58,000 websites daily, and it’s available in over 50 countries and in 20 languages.

4. Jobsafari

European aggregator service that is available in 10 countries and 8 languages, covers some countries that the other engines are not present in.

5. JobRobot

The biggest German language aggregator which is very useful for central European job opportunities.

Final Note

Try these job search engines and work out which one works best for you. Hopefully you will save both time and effort by using these aggregator services. As always, remember to work all other fronts as well: networking, social media and recruiters in order to get your next job.

What is your favourite job board and why?

Related: What Job Boards are Most Useful for Applicants?

Jorgen Sundberg

The original Undercover Recruiter, after 7 years in tech recruiting Jorgen now runs Link Humans, a social media marketing agency in London.

Filed Under: Job Board, Job Search Tagged With: , , , , , , ,